Home entertainment systems, including television and media centers, are converging with the Internet and providing access to a large number of available sources of content, such as video, movies, TV programs, music, etc. This expansion in the number of available sources necessitates a new strategy for navigating a media interface associated with such systems and making content selections.
The large number of possible content sources creates an interface challenge that has not yet been successfully solved in the field of home media entertainment. This challenge involves successfully presenting users with a large number of elements (programs, sources, etc.) without the need to tediously navigate through multiple display pages or hierarchies of content.
Further, most existing search paradigms make an assumption that the user knows what they are looking for when they start, whereas often, a mechanism to allow a process of discovery and cross linkage is more desirable or appropriate.
The information bottleneck in conventional media guide interfaces is largely the result of the limits to user awareness. If users cannot see all of the possible choices at one time, or are forced to spend inordinate amounts of time and effort in order to gain awareness of the same, then it is likely that opportunities will be missed. In addition, the notion of a workable, largely graphical search paradigm remains elusive.